U.S. Pat. No. 3,846,963 discloses a lawn mower having attached thereto an appliance comprising a feeding-worm transporting the clipped grass to a cutting device for further comminuting the grass which is then disposed to the ground through an extrusion plate. With this apparatus the clipped material will in the essence just be shortened with little compacting involved. With such tender treatment the rotting process of the clipped lawn will not be much improved as compared with material disposed untreated. Furthermore, depositing of the clipped grass onto the ground or lawn is done in the form of a material string of a width of only a few centimetres causing heavy material concentrations as compared with the operating width of the lawn mower of about 1 m which concentrations are detrimental to a fast rotting of the material. Also, the power for driving such an appliance is relatively high since all the material will have to be pressed through the relatively narrow holes of the extrusion plate. These holes will frequently be blocked by collected stones which requires an increased driving power and jeopardize the operating safety.
German Patent Laid Open Publications Nos. 30 48 364 and 28 31 011 disclose apparatuses for treating lawn with the clipped grass being collected from the ground comminuted and compacted and eventually deposited on the ground. The compacting devices used to have the form of a worm press or crushing rollers, respectively, which have a complex design and require a high driving power due to the extrusion plate used with these apparatuses as well. Furthermore, in contrast to the apparatus of the first-mentioned publication the compacting devices of these apparatuses are not arranged closely to the mowing device but connected thereto by a suction unit. For collecting the clipped grass a collecting container is provided in which a compacting device is rotating. The grass fed by means of the suction unit is rather loosely and consumes a lot of space in the collecting container since it is not compacted. Therefore, for temporary storing of the clipped material a large container is necessary provided that such a temporary storing is feasible at all. Rather, the compacting device must be continuously operating in order to prevent chocking of the material.
Furthermore, as a spreading means there is arranged below the compacting device a rotating disc formed as centrifugal disc. Therefore, very little grass will be deposited in the central region of the operating width whilst much compacted material will be deposited in the lateral regions, specifically in the lawn area not yet mown.
The present invention is an improvement of the apparatus and method according to my related patent U.S. Pat. No. 4,986,063.